This invention relates to a coil winding machine for winding coil around the core of an armature.
A typical conventional coil winding machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,927,456 in which an armature is held by a collet chuck and a pair of assemblies each comprising a chuck and a rotating flyer are disposed on the lateral sides of the armature. The machine has also a pair of tubular wire gripping means for gripping the distal end of lead of wire. The gripping means are extended laterally along the collet and are swingable so that their forward ends can be moved toward and away from the forward end of the collet. When a winding operation is started, the forward end of each gripping means is moved close to a tongue of the commutator of an armature which is held by the collet. With this state, a flyer is rotated in a certain direction so that lead of wire drawn out of the flyer can be hooked on the tongue located in its lateral direction. Then, the armature is rotated through 90 degrees so that the tongue is located in the vertically upper or lower position. At this time, the gripping means is swung away from the forward end of the collet in order to provide the wire between the gripping means and the tongue from loosening. Then, the wire between the gripping means and the tongue is cut away by a cutting means.
Furthermore, at the end of a winding operation for one armature, each gripping means is swung close to the forward end of the collet in order to cut the wire lead between the flyer and the tongue of the commutator. In this manner, the wire lead must be cut at the beginning and the end of a winding operation. However, in this conventional structure, as the gripping portion of gripping means cannot be moved sufficiently close to each tongue of the armature, a relatively long wire is wasted. In addition, a mechanism for swinging each gripping means is very complicated.